Faculty

Roberto Dominguez, Ph.D.

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William Maul Measey Presidential Professor of Physiology
Department: Physiology

Contact information
Department of Physiology
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
728 Clinical Research Bldg
415 Curie Blvd
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6085
Office: 215-573-4559
Fax: 215-573-2273
Education:
M.S. (Theoretical Physics & Mathematics)
Faculty of Physics, Odessa State University (former USSR), 1987.
Ph.D. (Protein Crystallography and Biochemistry)
Pasteur Institute and Paris-Sud University, Paris, France, 1996.
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Description of Research Expertise

My laboratory studies the proteins that control the actin cytoskeleton and cytoskeleton-membrane connections, as well as the signaling cascades that regulate their activities. We use a broad spectrum of experimental approaches, spanning structural biology, biochemistry and cell biology, allowing us to correlate structure to function.

Cytoskeletal proteins control a myriad of fundamental cellular activities, including cell locomotion, intracellular transport, endo- and exocytosis. Dysfunction of cytoskeletal components is often associated with devastating diseases, such as cancer and several muscular, immune and neurodegenerative disorders.

Cytoskeletal proteins often form large functional assemblies, and additionally associate with cellular membranes. Therefore, our goal is to study their structures and activities within the context of such protein-protein and protein-membrane interaction networks. An important tool in our research is X-ray crystallography. The atomic “snapshots” resulting from crystal structures provide a wealth of knowledge, but lack information about the dynamic aspects of protein function. To obtain this kind of information we use a host of other approaches, including molecular biology, bioinformatics, biophysical methods (ITC, MALS, FRET, TIRF, Cryo-EM), and cell biology.
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Last updated: 09/05/2018
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